


Memorial

by E_Salvatore



Series: Etta Bishop's No Good, Terrible, Awful, Horrible Holidays [3]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Etta remembers!, Family, Gen, Post-Finale, a lot of rambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_Salvatore/pseuds/E_Salvatore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘She brushes past a stranger one day and the next morning, she has two lives in her head.’ A Fringe Anniversary Special that follows Etta as she finally makes sense of her grandfather’s disappearance twenty years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorial

When she’s three, her grandfather disappears.

Etta doesn’t realize, not at first. She’s three and life is full of little distractions, like the falling leaves outside and the stray puppy that’s started hanging around their house and the fact that Aunt Astrid has finally, _finally_ started allowing her to feed Gene. But slowly, surely, the little girl realizes that she’s lost something for the first time in her life.

When her parents are called away – _to save the world_ , Daddy told her once while Mama laughed and said he was going to get it into Etta’s head that her parents are superheroes – she’s either left with Aunt Astrid or Aunt Rachel, sometimes Grandma Nina. Etta can’t remember the last time her grandfather came over to babysit her, and she should remember because they always have the best time together.

On the rare occasions that she’s allowed into the lab, Etta doesn’t hear funny music playing anymore. Even at three, her ears can differentiate between her grandfather’s old records and the sharp quality of modern music. Besides, there’s never any music in the lab anymore.

It really hits her, though, when there’s an empty chair during Thanksgiving. Etta is three and Thanksgiving doesn’t mean much to her, only that her father spends even more time in the kitchen than usual and her cousins get to come over and play all day. But above all, Turkey Day – as her father calls it – means her grandfather sitting at the head of the table, asking everyone to share one thing they’re grateful for this year. Everyone takes turns until it’s Walter’s turn, and then he’ll go on and on about the funniest things for at least five minutes until Etta and her cousins are shrieking with laughter and Nina finally puts an end to her grandfather’s rambling by reminding him that the food is getting cold.

This year, there’s an empty chair at the table. Her father is the one who reminds them to _say thank you_ before they eat and when Etta bites into her food it’s still steaming, because her grandfather wasn’t around to ramble on until the food cooled down.

At the end of the night, when her cousins have left and her mother has talked Nina into staying over for the night, when her parents tuck her in and Etta sees, for the first time, the sadness etched upon her father’s face, she finally knows something’s wrong.

“Where’s Grandpa Wally?” She asks, and her mother’s fingers in her hair still as her father looks away.

Mama smiles, but it looks like she’s put on one of those smiling lips stickers and it might fall off any minute now. “He’s away for now, baby girl. Your grandpa’s gone on a trip.”

It’s a very long trip, Etta thinks, because usually when someone she loves goes away on a trip she can measure how long they’ll be away by how many nights she’ll have to sleep until they’re back. And she’s slept more nights than she can count since the last time she saw her grandfather. But trips are nothing new to her; her parents are always away on trips, and they always, always come back.

So Etta smiles and accepts her mother’s explanation. “Okay. When’s he coming back?”

That’s when her mother’s sticker smile finally falls off and Daddy turns back to her. He breathes in deep, the way she does when one of her parents is about to rinse out her hair, and reaches out to pull Etta’s blanket up to her shoulders. “He’s not….” Her daddy turns to Mama then, and they do that thing Aunt Astrid always teases them about. Everyone says her parents can talk without _actually_ talking. Etta thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world.

“We’re not sure, baby.” Mama says, and it looks like she’s trying to smile but she can’t.

“But…” Etta clutches her blanket. “But he’ll be back for Christmas, right? Christmas is Grandpa’s favorite.” She looks at one parent then another, waiting for an answer that never comes.

“Christmas is everyone’s favorite,” Her father smiles. It looks shaky, like when her mother dropped her off at day care for the first time and told Etta to be brave, so she forced a smile on her face even though she felt like crying.

“Good night, Etta.” Mama whispers when she leans in to kiss Etta’s forehead. Her father goes through their usual bedtime routine and Etta pretends nothing’s wrong, keeps smiling until they turn off the lights and close the door.

She pushes back her blanket and crawls across her bed to reach for a toy; it’s a little Gene, and her grandpa gave it to her last Christmas.

Etta doesn’t think her grandpa will be giving her anything this Christmas.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

“Hey, mom, can we-”

Etta stops short and hides around the corner, hoping her parents didn’t hear her. It seems the eight-year-old is in luck, because her parents are completely unaware that she’s eavesdropping.

“We’re going to have to tell her someday, Peter.” Her mother says gently, in the same tone she uses when she’s trying to convince Etta to tell her what’s wrong.

Her father rubs at his forehead, looking impossibly tired. “What are we going to tell her, ‘Livia? You know all of this is crazy. It doesn’t matter what the world accepts now; they’ll never be ready to deal with alternate timelines.”

“This isn’t about the world,” Her mother insists. “This is about our daughter, and a life she should know about. It’s been years and she’s still asking about Walter. Do you think she’ll ever stop? You know what happens when people in this family want to find someone we’ve lost, Peter. We rip holes through time and space.”

“You don’t think she’d-” Etta risks a peek into the room when her father’s voice falters, and wonders if she could dart into the living room and hide behind the piano without being caught. Before she can make a run for it, her mother speaks again.

“I think she’s our daughter, and she’s Walter’s granddaughter. And if she’s anything like us, someday she might make our mistakes.”

“’Liv,” Her father sighs. “I know we’ve messed up along the way and sometimes we let things get too personal, sometimes we put too much focus on the end goal and not the means. Hell, Walter almost destroyed two worlds because of what he did. But I wouldn’t call any of it a mistake. And if that’s something Etta has to go through, I don’t think telling her the truth will stop her.”

Etta gasps and ducks out of sight as her mother pushes herself up from the wall she’d been leaning against and walks to the sofa where her father sits. “At least she’ll know where to go,” Her mother says, sitting down next to her father. “And _when_ to go.”

Her parents are making less and less sense by the minute, and all eight-year-old Etta knows is that she’s supposed to be at her friend’s house right now. So she retraces her steps all the way up the stairs, and stomps down them ten times louder than she normally would.

“Mom!” Etta calls out, heading straight for the front door. “We’re late!”

Her parents appear while she’s buttoning up her coat, and her mother passes her a neatly-wrapped box. “Why don’t you go put the present in the car first? I’ll just get my things.”

Etta nods and turns to her father. “Bye, dad!” She smiles, pretending not to notice how tired her father looks. He doesn’t like it when people can tell he’s not feeling well. Her mother doesn’t either, so Etta doesn’t point out the heavy look in her eyes when they get into the car. By the time they’ve arrived at Anne’s birthday party, her mother looks completely normal again.

That isn’t the last time Etta overhears such a conversation, and words like _alternate worlds_ and _timelines_ , concepts like _a hole through time and space_ and _paradox_ fill her head while other kids learn about polar bears and astronauts and kissing. Etta’s parents don’t tell her what it is they really do for a living until she’s thirteen, but by then she already knows she wants to do the exact same thing one day.

She’s known since she was eight years old.

 .

 .

 .

 .

 .

Etta learns, at a very young age, that the Bishop name is as much a curse as it is a gift.

For as long as she can remember, Etta has been proud of the weight her last name carries. When she’s still a little kid and the receptionists eye her warily whenever she steps into Fringe Division or Massive Dynamic, a simple introduction is enough to get her where she needs to go. In school, her name is enough to coax a smile from even the most feared of math teachers as they greet her warmly and whisper _at least I’ll have one star student in this class._ In college, a scribbled _Bishop_ guarantees a second look at the paper her professors would have otherwise cast aside; her family’s legacy makes everyone take the thirteen-year-old girl seriously.

Up until the age of fourteen, the only shadow her last name casts is when people put one and one together and ask her what happened to her grandfather. The worst thing is when all of her professors at MIT offer her their condolences as soon as they hear the name _Bishop_.

But then she turns fourteen and her last name becomes a burden heavier than Etta thinks she can shoulder. She knows by then that someday, her parents’ workplace will become hers as well. So Etta applies for an internship, gets the spot thanks to someone down in HR who probably doesn’t even care who her parents are and shows up for her first day of work with a bright smile and a light heart. It turns heavy as stone when people start identifying her as Henrietta Dunham-Bishop before she’s even been given a chance to introduce herself. They smile at first, and stick out their hands and offer up their names. As soon as she turns her back to them, the whispers start.

_Dunham-Bishop?_

_She’s the youngest intern ever. How else did you think she got in?_

_Mark my words, she’ll be the youngest_ everything _._

_Oh, come on. By the time you make team leader, she’ll be running this place._

Etta keeps walking, plasters on the smile everyone says reminds them of her father and tucks back loose tendrils of hair that have escaped the ponytail she wears her blonde hair in– _just like your mother,_ they tell her. It’s a good thing she inherited more than just her mother’s hair. She’s as much Olivia Dunham’s daughter as she is Peter Bishop’s and if there’s one thing her mother is good at - amongst a myriad of other skills such as saving the world, setting things on fire, recovering memories from an erased timeline - it’s proving people wrong and winning them over.

If Etta has even a pinch of her mother in her – and her father assures her it’s more than just a pinch, perhaps a heaping tablespoon – then winning everyone over should be no hard task, she decides. So she sets out to live up to both the Dunham and the Bishop in her name, and tempers her moments of brilliance with warm smiles, hard work and just as much coffee-fetching as any other intern.

By the time she’s nineteen, with a college degree and the necessary training under her belt, she’s warmly welcomed into Fringe Division and this time, the smiles are genuine. Whispers of nepotism become a thing of the past. People finally move on from asking her _Bishop? As in Peter Bishop’s daughter?_

After that, they start asking her _Bishop? Like Walter Bishop?_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

She brushes past a stranger one day and the next morning, she has two lives in her head.

Etta is twenty-four and newly promoted – the youngest team leader the Division has ever seen, everyone keeps pointing out. She smiles and shakes her head, says _it’s only co-leader, you guys_ so many times the words nearly escape her when someone tells her she’s got flowers on her desk. She catches herself and says a simple _thank you_ instead, and nods when the young girl tells her Director Dunham wants to see her.

The flowers are from Broyles, and Etta snatches up a card with _congratulations_ printed on it in bold cursive. Four more people stop her on her way to the elevator, and Etta does her best to thank them for their well-wishes before she finally, finally locks herself away in the steel box and hits the button for her mother’s floor. The note was personally written by Broyles, in penmanship she recognizes from birthday and Christmas cards. He tells her how proud everyone is, how he always knew she’d go down this path even when her parents still had their fingers crossed and hoped Etta would choose to be a doctor or lawyer or scientist (preferable of the boring, sane, non-mad variety) instead. _As if any Bishop could have a lab without being a mad scientist,_ Broyles writes. She’s still laughing when the metal doors slide open, and Etta keeps her eyes on the card as she steps off the elevator. A man bumps into her and apologizes, and she turns around to tell him it was her fault anyway. But her ears start ringing and she feels as if she’s floating away, and Etta catches only a glimpse of brown hair before the elevator doors close and her mind is attacked by a flurry of images. The sensation of sudden weightlessness is disorientating, and she stumbles over to the wall to lean against something solid. The ringing in her ears turns into a painfully high screech as memories rush by so fast she can barely make out faces or objects, and all Etta can do is wonder if she’s inherited her mother’s migraines. It’s the worst headache she’s ever had, and a memory from when she was seven comes to mind. Her family was on a road trip; it was her mother’s turn to drive, and Etta caught her eye in the mirror as Olivia double-checked oncoming traffic before she made a turn. They smiled at each other in the mirror and all was alright until Olivia’s smile twisted into a grimace. With a whispered, pained _Peter_ , she pulled over to the side of the road. Etta watched her father get out of the car and jog over to the driver’s side while her mother pulled herself into the passenger’s seat and reached for a bottle of pills.

But no, that can’t be right. When Etta was seven, the world was at war and she was just settling into another foster home. She had no family, no parents, only a blurry image from her past. There were no such things as road trips in Etta’s childhood.

She remembers that drive to New York though. Etta remembers the way her mother shot her a reassuring smile after the sudden headache, and how her father drove the rest of the way. Her mother slept through that half of the trip, and was disorientated when they pulled up to Grandma Nina’s house.

Grandma Nina? Etta had no grandmother, no grandfather. She was an orphan, all on her own until the day Broyles found her one day. He put her in touch with Nina after that, and it took a while before she was even comfortable enough to call the woman a friend.

That can’t be true. Etta can’t remember a day in her life that she hasn’t known her grandmother, can’t remember a birthday or a Fourth of July or a Thanksgiving without Nina. In fact, that day they drove to New York because Nina was throwing a birthday party for Etta. She can remember the cake, the gifts, the lab coats Astrid made everyone wear for a picture.

Suddenly, Etta isn’t so sure about anything in her life. The dizziness passes as she starts to question her memories, and she slowly opens eyes she has no recollection of closing. She becomes aware of the quiet hallway, the floor under her feet, the card in her hand. Broyles’ familiar handwriting grounds her, reminds her of birthday cards and fake top-secret documents he’d mail her when she was a child, with the word _confidential_ scrawled across each page in red marker.

These days, she receives real top-secret documents and sends out confidential reports of her own. Etta is twenty-four, she is a Fringe agent just like her parents and she’s on her way to see her mother. The world is at peace and Observers aren’t actually real and her mother is just down the hallway, just a few steps away, safely hidden in an office and not a prison of amber. As she stalks down the hallway, a stubborn memory refuses to fade to the back of her mind. It’s a voice, so familiar it hurts. It doesn’t hurt any less just because she can put a name and a face to that voice now.

It takes the rest of the day for Etta to realize why the wound feels so fresh when she thinks about that voice. It belongs to the man who bumped into her, the man with the brown hair and the accented voice and the unnecessary apology.

 .

 .

 .

 .

 .

A week later, Simon Foster bumps into her again.

“Simon,” Etta says, forgetting for just a second which timeline she’s living in. “Foster,” She adds quickly, plastering on a smile. “I’m Etta Bishop. We’re going to lead a team together.”

“Oh, yes,” Simon nods, shaking her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. And I’m sorry about the,” He smiles and it’s almost sheepish. “Well, about bumping into you… twice.”

So this is Simon Foster, her future colleague and inadvertent returner of memories. He smiles with his eyes and runs a hand through his hair, and Etta almost expects Observers to start popping up out of nowhere. “I’m pretty sure I was at least half responsible for both times, so don’t worry about it.” Etta assures him, trying to shrug off the ease that comes with knowing someone for years. “So, you just transferred here?”

“From the London office, yes,” Simon nods, ushering her to the side when someone nearly bumps into them. They end up standing near the entrance, which affords Etta a clear view of the crowd. She gives the room a quick once-over, searching for her parents. They must be around somewhere because they’re never late to the office’s holiday party, but Etta hasn’t seen them all evening. “Director Dunham talked me into it, actually. We worked on a case together two months ago.”

“My mom has a habit of poaching everyone’s best agents,” Etta says without giving it much thought, only to realize that Simon is probably one of the last people working for Fringe Division to find out whose daughter she is.

“Your mother?” He asks, and Etta wonders how hard she’ll have to work to prove that she earned her spot working by his side. She bats at an errant thought and swats it away: there was a time – a lifetime - when Simon was one of the very, very few people in the world to know who her parents are. Etta has to remind herself that it’s a different world they live in now, and her smile grows strained by the thought. Simon responds with the slightest squint of his eyes. “Now that you’ve mentioned it, I can certainly see the family resemblance.”

“It’s the hair,” Etta tells him. “One of the few things I got from her, actually. So which case did you work on together?” She asks before Simon can get a word in, quickly moving the conversation away from her parentage.

She nods along as Simon launches into the tale and offers up a comment or two whenever she should, but Etta finds her attention drifting away from present company to settle on a version of Simon that probably never existed. In the past week, Etta’s spent every waking moment comparing her two selves only to find that no matter how different her life might be now, that voice inside her head is still the same, still her. But so much of the Simon she knew was shaped by the war, and his eyes don’t even look the same anymore. One thing becomes painfully clear then: Simon might be the key to her lost life but there isn’t anything in his mind for Etta to unlock.

It hurts to realize that the less she sees of the Simon she knew in this man, the less interested she becomes. He’s still talking, completely oblivious to her troubled eyes. Etta considers her options, wonders if a few well-picked words could make him remember. But the Simon she knew – there was always so much pain in his eyes. Simon was always there for her with a warm smile and a witty quip, but the reason they got along so well, the reason everyone in the Resistance got along so well, was because of their pain, their loss. It seems cruel to put this innocent stranger through that just to regain her friend. No, Simon is better off this way. But Etta was never given that choice, never had someone who could decide to spare her this pain. The reason this past week has been so disconcerting is because when Etta looks at herself in the mirror every morning, she sees one person where there should be two. Her mother’s voice as she calls up the stairs to ask if Etta wants a ride to the office jolts her out of memories of a time when this couldn’t possibly be more than a daydream. Etta should be different – she was so convinced that she _is_ different, that her two lives couldn’t possibly be further apart. But her eyes are haunted still, by the same loss she’s always seen in them.

Etta has spent her whole life – both her lives – looking, searching, hunting. It was her parents before this, and a past she could barely remember, along with a future she had such high hopes for. Now it is her grandpa, and whispers of _poor thing, they never did find out what happened to her grandfather,_ and memories of her father nearly driving himself crazy as he tried to find his father. She is cursed to remember her own death, but even a lifetime of memories can’t tell her what happened to her grandfather. Etta is haunted, just as she always has been. She can no longer remember a time she wasn’t looking for her grandfather, consumed by the same madness that drove her to track down her parents in a world where the Observers had a two-decade head start on her.

Simon makes a joke, something about working with her mother and bragging about it to his parents. His voice rips her away from her thoughts and back into the present. Etta laughs right on cue and tries to mask the disappointment she feels when Simon doesn’t even notice that it was a fake laugh. He goes back to his story, and this is the part where her father comes in. She tells Simon she had no idea that he’d worked with both of her parents and observes him as he speaks.

Of course Etta recognized him the instant he bumped into her last week, the minute she got her memories back. And when she finally made her way to her mother’s office only to be told that she would be partnered up with an Agent Simon Foster, everything seemed to fall into place. Etta thought she knew then why and how Simon had unknowingly returned her memories. He was the one puzzle piece that had been missing from her life and his appearance had been the last fragment of the chipped key she needed to unlock her memories.

As far as theories go, it’s a pretty shitty one. All Etta knows is that Simon somehow reminded her of a lifetime he seems to have no recollection of, and it’s more of a disappointment than it should be. What’s the point of remembering if all it does is give her more questions and no answers? She has spent her entire life looking for her grandfather; _two_ lifetimes. Somehow, Walter Bishop’s steps are the ones she’s destined to follow more than those of her parents, and Etta feels like she’s drowning in those footprints, lost in a puddle of quicksand while her grandfather’s trail gets wiped away by a tidal wave as she struggles to chase after him while people hold her back and tell her she’s a ghost of a brilliant man they once knew. Etta’s life has never been her own, and she made her peace with that after years of people telling her everything that makes her Etta Bishop is just a blend of two other people, two people she looks up to more than anyone else in the world. More than anything else, Etta is simply the daughter of Peter Bishop and Olivia Dunham, and she’s learned to be okay with that.

What she can’t make her peace with, though, is realizing that her entire life is a memorial for her grandfather. His shadow haunts her now more than ever as her mind tries to fill in the blanks, tries to reach, impossibly and futilely, for memories of disasters that took place after she died in her father’s arms. And Etta sees now that it will be a never-ending service in memory of her grandfather, can see the years that stretch ahead of them and the questions she’ll ask, the answers she’ll spend her whole life looking for. If even memories of another life – another _world_ – can’t tell her what happened to her grandfather, Etta highly doubts a rambling, clueless Simon Foster can.

She smiles at him now and wonders if maybe someday, he’ll remember. But what good will it bring? Etta spends her nights reliving her own death, and at least hers had been a clean cut. The sight of Simon’s detached head haunts her more than the darkness she lost herself in after her heart stopped. Besides, Simon knew even less than her, _left_ before he could learn anything she doesn’t already know. It’s best, Etta decides again, for Simon to never remember.

“So the suspect was- Is everything alright?” Simon asks with furrowed brows, cutting himself off mid-sentence when he finally notices the strain in Etta’s smile.

“Yeah,” Etta says, putting more effort into faking a bright smile. “Everything’s fine. It’s just – could you excuse me for a bit?” Now that she’s been pulled back into the present, Etta feels the unmistakable burn of her mother’s eyes on her back.

“Oh,” Simon seems taken aback, though he quickly regains his composure and shoots her a smile. “Of course. I’ll see you around, then?”

“See you around,” Etta echoes just to be polite, though she’s already making her way through the crowd to approach her mother. It’s only now that she remembers her mother is the one who convinced Simon to transfer here. And that morning a week ago, when Olivia had called her up, she’d sounded uncharacteristically excited about something – about letting Etta know who she’d been partnered up with. Etta remembers now, remembers things from this life that she’d forgotten just as she’d forgotten her other life. The way her mother sometimes holds her extra tight for no reason, the bullet she’d given to Etta on her thirteenth birthday, how tense her mother had been the entire week of… well, now she knows: the entire week of the day she died.

Etta remembers the day her grandfather went missing, and the months that followed when her father nearly drove himself mad trying to find a way to get to Walter while her mother sat quietly in a corner, offering support but not much else, seemingly resigned to the loss of her father-in-law. She remembers the stories her mother used to tell her about her grandfather, when she was young enough not to question them. Olivia spoke of a great sacrifice, called her grandfather a hero and brought up events Etta had no recollection of until a week ago.

Her mother stands in the far corner of the room while Etta tries to part through the crowd, but one knowing look from Olivia is enough to freeze her daughter in place. Etta, wide-eyed and on the edge of a great revelation, turns to her mother with a thousand questions in her eyes. Olivia smiles and discreetly tugs at the necklace she’s worn ever since she gave Etta the bullet. It’s a simple necklace, but it bears the outline of a tulip, a symbol Etta has seen countless of times as she passed by her father’s lab, where he has a drawing that looks exactly the same on his wall. It’s the tulip her father takes out from its frame and stares at once a year, on the anniversary of her grandfather’s disappearance.

She nods, just once, and Etta breathes a sigh of relief even as her feet remain stuck to the ground. Simon doesn’t remember and he probably never will, and Etta would not wish two lives upon anyone she loves because it is, above all else, a burden, one that’s been pressing down on her shoulders ever since the day she remembered. There’s something her mother used to say, when Etta was nine and thought being independent and mature meant keeping all of her problems to herself.

_Whatever it is, we’ll shoulder it together._

And once again, her mother is there to share her burden, to carry the weight of a dying world, a bloody war and a forgotten sacrifice. There’s another thing Olivia used to say when Etta was a tiny kid and wouldn’t stop questioning everything her mother said, especially when it concerned green vegetables and the necessity for her to eat them.

_I’m your mother. I know everything._

Etta doesn’t know when she stopped believing that, but it was a mistake to ever doubt her mother. If only she had gone to Olivia earlier, she would have found her answers before her questions started haunting her. She squares her shoulders, moves her feet and crosses the room the join her mother, her mother who has always been there to understand her, to share knowing looks with her, to tell her the answer to all the questions that kept her awake at night.

For the first time in twenty years, Etta finally sees an end to the memorial service her grandfather never got. Maybe now, with answers in hand, she’ll be able to bury his ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> So, here’s how much of a procrastinator I am: this was supposed to be a Christmas Special. As you can see, there was… a slight delay. But hey, I’m just in time to commemorate the end of our sho– ahem, I meant The End of All Things, That Terrible Day We Shall Not Speak Of.
> 
> This can be read along with Parade and Celebration, in the order of Parade first, Celebration second and Memorial third. The stories aren’t actually related, so feel free to skip those. They just take place in the same universe in my mind, although this one is definitely set in a different timeline. It’s been so long since I last wrote for this fandom and it was a challenge to get everyone just right, but I hope I did okay(ish) and you guys enjoyed this. Happy New Year!


End file.
